“That’s right, Potter! Shall we? No? Maybe not such a good idea any more, eh?” he said across me, to Gyuri, with a raised eyebrow.
xi.
WHEN WE TURNED IN TO the garage and got out of the car everyone was still high and laughing and recounting bits and pieces of the ambush in multiple languages—everyone except me, blank and echoing with shock, fast cuts and sudden movements still reverberating from the dark at me and too stunned to speak a word.
“Look at him,” said Boris, breaking short from what he was saying and knocking me in the arm. “He looks like he just had the best blow job of his life.”
They were all laughing at me, even Shirley Temple, the whole world was laughter bouncing fractal and metallic off the tiled walls, delirium and phantasmagorica, a sense of the world growing and swelling like some fabulous blown balloon floating and billowing away to the stars, and I was laughing too and I wasn’t even sure what I was laughing at since I was still so shaken I was trembling all over.
Boris lit a cigarette. His face was greenish in the subterranean light. “Wrap that thing up,” he said affably, nodding at the painting, “and then we will stick it in the hotel safe and go and get you a real blow job.”
Gyuri frowned. “I thought we were going to eat first?”
“You are right. I am starving. Dinner first, then blow job.”
“Blake’s?” said Cherry, opening the passenger door of the Land Rover. “An hour, say?”
“Sounds good.”
“Hate to go like this,” Cherry said, plucking at the collar of his shirt, which was transparent and stuck to him with sweat. “Then again I could use a cognac. Some of the hundred-euro stuff. I could install about a quart right now. Shirley—Gyuri—” he said something in Ukrainian.
“He is saying,” said Boris, in the burst of laughter that followed, “he is telling Shirley and Gyuri that they are buying the dinner tonight. With—” Gyuri triumphantly hoisting the bag.
Then—a pause. Gyuri looked troubled. He said something to Shirley Temple, and Shirley—laughing at him, deep peachy dimples—waved him off, waved off the bag that Gyuri tried to offer, and rolled his eyes when Gyuri offered it again.
“Ne syeiychas,” said Victor Cherry irritably. “Not now. Divide it later.”
“Please,” said Gyuri, offering the bag one more time.
“Oh, come on. Divide it later or we’ll be here all night.”
Ya khochu chto-by Shirli prinyala eto, said Gyuri, a sentence so plain and so earnestly enunciated that even I, with my lousy Russki, understood it. I want that Shirley takes it.
“No way!” said Shirley, in English, and—unable to resist—darted a glance at me to make sure I’d heard him say it, like a kid proud of knowing the answer in school.
“Come on.” Boris—hands on hips—looked aside in exasperation. “Does it matter who carries in their car? One of you is going to make off with it? No. We are all friends here. What will you do?” he said, when neither of them made a move. “Leave it on the floor for Dima to find? One of you decide please.”
There was a long silence. Shirley, standing with arms folded, shook his head firmly at Gyuri’s repeated insistence and then, with a worried look, asked Boris a question.
“Yes, yes, fine with me,” said Boris impatiently. “Go ahead,” he said to Gyuri. “You three go together.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am positive. You have worked enough for tonight.”
“You’ll manage?”
“No,” said Boris, “we will two of us walk! of course, of course,” he said, shushing Gyuri’s objection, “we can manage, go on,” and we were all laughing as Vitya and Shirley and Gyuri too waved us goodbye (Davaye!) and hopped in the Range Rover and drove away, up the ramp and out to the Overtoom again.
xii.
“AH, WHAT A NIGHT,” said Boris, scratching his stomach. “Starving! Let’s get out of here. Although—” he glanced back, knotted brow, at the Range Rover driving off—“well, no matter. We will be fine. Short hop. Blake’s is easy walk from your hotel. And you,” he said to me, nodding—“careless! You should tie that thing up again! Don’t just carry it wrapped with no string.”
“Right,” I said, “right,” and I circled to the front of the car so I could rest it on the hood while I fumbled for the baker’s twine in my pocket.
“May I see?” said Boris, coming up behind me.
I drew back the felt, and the two of us stood awkwardly for a moment like a pair of minor Flemish noblemen hovering at the margin of a nativity painting.